Miguel and Rosario finally got the time and date for their departure. The situation in El Salvador was unbearable, and they had been waiting more than two years for this time to come. Miguel had saved and borrowed half of the $10,000 dollars required for the trip. His brother Pablo sent him the rest from the United States.
Their minds were filled with uncertainty. They knew they had to leave their kids with Rosario’s mother, Doña Marta. For Miguel, 43, who, with an eighth grade education, was the main breadwinner of the household, this journey to the United States signified freedom, opportunity and a new beginning.
For Rosario, 38, a woman who became a mother for the first time at the age of 14, this was an opportunity: her kids, and her brothers, were counting on her help from the United States.
Their house, made out of wood, was a typical one in Metapán, a city full of natural beauty and extreme poverty located in northwest El Salvador. Of her eight children, five of them (Jorge, 19; Francisco, 17; Rosario Maria, 15; Martita, 9; and little Miguelito, only 6 months) lived with their parents and grandmother in a three-bedroom house. The girls and the grandma slept in one bedroom, the boys in the second, and the couple in the third. “Our house in El Salvador had no comfort,” said Rosario with tears in her eyes. “For us it was a palace, because it was the place where my children were born and raised, but if you go there you probably will say that it is small and uncomfortable. We always had the essential things needed to survive—well, sometimes not even the essential things.”
Miguel worked in the fields all his life. He supervised men, women and even children, who worked cultivating all sorts of vegetables. Four of his eight children worked with him in the fields. Miguel trained his sons Fernando, 25, Raul, 23, as well as Jorge and Francisco to cultivate since they were little kids. Miguel said they were the best kids—obedient, hard workers—who really liked working in the fields. It was the only decent and well-paid job available in their town. But that was not what he wanted for them. Miguel dreamed of them having a career and a better future.
Rosario kept house, with help from her mother. Doña Marta helped her with the food preparation, especially with the tamales that Rosario sold to the workers in the production fields every day at lunchtime. Three of Rosario’s eight children were married; at 38, she was already grandmother to five wonderful grandchildren. She knew she did not have anything material to offer her children, she said, “but love and care until the day I die.” Rosario was born and raised in the same town. She started working with her mother, cutting flowers for export, when she was only 7 years old. Rosario never went to school; she was so poor that she was needed more to help her mother to sustain her younger brothers.
Rosario’s father left her when she was only 5. Even though she was illiterate, she wanted her children to have everything she did not have, including a stable marriage like hers with Miguel, so her children would never suffer the way she did.
Jorge and Francisco helped their father with the household expenses. His other children also helped him with the $5,000 he needed to save for the trip to the United States, giving him every single cent of their salary for almost two years. It was an enormous sacrifice, but they all knew it was their only choice in a Third World country with social instability, poverty and a guerrilla war. The reality of their lives was inescapable.
Miguel and Rosario were leaving their children behind, but they understood that this was the only exit from their economic and social situation. Miguel said: “It has been said in El Salvador that every day 300 undocumented Salvadorans got out of the country, trying to cross the Mexican border, one of the most supervised frontiers in the world, to get to U.S. I was not afraid of the journey. I was afraid of the country I was about to discover.”
Miguel and Rosario decided not to tell the small children the date they were leaving. The fact that they were leaving them was enough. They also arranged with the coyote (the person in charge of the trip) to let them take little Miguelito, who was still breastfeeding, since the journey was supposed to be an easy one.
Fernando, Raul and Rebecca (one of Miguel and Rosario’s older children who did not live with them) promised their parents that they and Doña Marta were going to take good care of the little ones. Rosario recalled, “My children told me, ‘Vaya con Dios, Mamá’ [go with God, Mother], and take advantage of the opportunity, for us and for you too, Mamá.”
For Miguel and Rosario, like other immigrants from El Salvador, going to the United States is complicated by the recent history of the two countries. According to the Journal of Latin American Geography, decades of poverty, corrupt governments and political repression in El Salvador led to a 12-year civil war fought on several fronts. The civil war between the U.S.–backed Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebels involved extreme brutality.
As the U.S. Department of Immigration noted, tens of thousands of Salvadorans have entered the United States as undocumented migrants, typically crossing three to four borders overland with the assistance of coyotes; many request asylum at some point after arrival. The U.S. immigration services argue that Salvadorans who have entered the country without papers are illegal economic migrants rather than displaced refugees.
On April 26, 2004, Miguel and Rosario started their trip to the United States. They left the house at 4 a.m. in a car driven by a Mexican man. The car trip was uncomfortable, especially for Rosario, who was not used to riding in cars. The driver had to stop many times so she could vomit. Also, from time to time, she needed to breastfeed little Miguelito.
When they finally arrived in Guadalajara, Mexico, a couple in a hacienda was expecting them. It was a wonderful Spanish-colonial house in the middle of an immense farm. The Mexican couple was hospitable. Guadalupe, the woman, helped with little Miguelito while Rosario took a bath to recover her energy after the many times she vomited during the trip. But that was only the first and easiest part to their journey. The unpredictable was about to come.
Two days later, a Salvadoran man came to the hacienda and asked them to get ready to walk. Rosario said: “I remembered my mother made me a carrier for Miguelito out of a very resistant piece of fabric that Miguel found in a warehouse. It was like a backpack. Our son was the only thing we were carrying. Sometimes Miguel wanted to help me with him, but I never took Miguelito away from my chest. I felt that he needed me so much that if something happened it will happen to both of us at the same time.”
They walked for about five hours, stopping to rest for less than 10 minutes every hour. Miguel remembered that they arrived at a small town, where they met eight more people—six adults and two children, approximately 6 and 10 years old. While in town, they ate, rested for less than 40 minutes and started to walk again, but now with more caution. They did not know where they were, only that the sun was leaving them behind.
Rosario started to feel really tired. Miguel insisted on helping with the baby, but she refused. Suddenly, coming out of nowhere, two men appeared to join the group.
The coyote told the group that the two men were in charge and that they would help them get through the tunnel. Miguel remembered: “The tunnel was something new for us. I had no idea something like that existed. I do not know who did it or where it is. It was so dark, and we were so tired and confused ... I was pretty much carrying Rosario with Miguelito over my shoulders.” Once inside the tunnel, they rested for less than 15 minutes, and the journey continued. They were astonished to see other groups of people crossing at the same time.
Two hours later they were in the United States. “The things I can remember when we got out of the tunnel were the flashlights,” Miguel recalled. “Everything was so confusing that many times I regretted to put our lives in danger,” he said. “There was a truck waiting for us outside the tunnel; everybody was scared to death. We drove for approximately two hours, until we finally stopped at a motel. Once again I had no idea where.”
In less than an hour, a bus came to pick them up, and it took them to California.
Miguel remembered when his brother Mario arrived in California in his minivan to pick him up: “I just cried like a little child. Not for me or the journey, but for the unknown future and my kids in El Salvador.” Then they headed east. Miguel’s brother Mario, a construction worker in New Jersey, had already prepared a room for Miguel, Rosario and Miguelito. “I just remembered how safe I felt when my brother was driving toward here. Rosario was impressed by the clean roads and the highways—nothing similar to what we have in El Salvador. For us it was like arriving to a different world.”
A year later, Miguel lives in New Jersey, works in construction during the week, and does landscape maintenance on weekends. None of these jobs is permanent. Rosario works as a babysitter, a job that she enjoys because of all her experience with her eight children.
Miguel does not make a permanent salary but earns enough to pay for the room his brother rented a year ago in Palisades Park, N.J. Some weeks they are not able to send money to their country, but they wish to have a permanent job to secure their lives here and to secure the futures of their children in El Salvador.
Gianna Nicasio is a journalism and media studies major at Rutgers-Newark.
